Page 31 of Two Rogues Make a Right
“And maybe get a loaf of bread if the baker is still open. We still have some of Mrs. Tanner’s jam. There won’t be any milk for your tea, but—”
“It’s all right,” Martin said, slightly stunned, as he finally understood that Will was attempting to provision them for a day spent in bed. “I can take my tea black.” He swallowed.
Will did something between a salute and a wave and sauntered off into the cottage. Martin was left staring after him, then shook himself into some semblance of intelligence and headed for the village. As always when he went to the village, he had the urge to pull his hat low over his forehead, but if anyone had recognized him as bearing a striking resemblance to the former owner of Friars’ Gate, they didn’t mention it.
Daisy was behind the bar at the Blue Boar, and her eyebrows shot all the way up to the ruffle on her cap when she saw him. “Out and about on your own?” she asked, pouring him a half pint of bitter without his asking. “Mr. Sedgwick must be worried sick, wondering what’s happened to you.”
“Very droll. I’m here for a jug of ale and to tell you not to bother coming tomorrow morning.”
“Why?”
“Because the cottage is already in a state of impeccable cleanliness and you deserve a morning to yourself,” Martin said, because it was the first thing he thought of. “Also, would you show me how to do the wash?”
“How to wash what?”
“Linens and shirts and that sort of thing.” It had occurred to him that he did not want people examining any bedlinens he and Will had debauched. This was likely prudish and almost certainly eccentric, but he wasn’t exposing Will to even the shadow of a rumor. At Lindley Priory, there had been a vast and steamy laundry where maids boiled and beat the household linens, then dried them in the sun. That was satisfactorily anonymous in a way that turning your underthings over to your neighbor was not. Besides, it seemed that laundry was something else he could do, like feeding the pigs. It wasn’t, perhaps, an important task, but it had to be done, and somebody had to do it. Maybe, given time, the Martin Easterbrook who tended livestock and thought about laundry could also do other useful things. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, that is. I’m not trying to do you out of work,” he added, when she still hadn’t replied.
“That,” she said, an odd expression on her face, “is almost sweet.”
“No it isn’t,” he said automatically.
“You’re really harmless, aren’t you?”
“Take it back.” He was utterly confused about what was going on.
“You’re stroppy, to be sure—”
“I beg your pardon, but areyoucallingmestroppy?”
“—but it’s all on the surface.”
“I assure you that I’m foul tempered down to my very soul.”
She patted his forearm. “Drink up, lamb. One day next week I’ll teach you how to do the wash.” He had the uncomfortable sense that they had just taken part in two very different conversations.
On his way home, a loaf of bread under one arm and the jug of ale in the crook of his elbow, he picked a handful of primroses that were growing beneath the hedges that lined the lane. This was reprehensibly transparent of him even though he was fairly certain he had long passed the point where mysterious aloofness was an option. But he still felt like he ought to pretend that he hadn’t passed that point, for Will’s sake if not his own self-defense.
When he opened the door and thrust the flowers at Will with all the ceremony of a man trying to get rid of something nasty, he felt like he had crossed an irrevocable line. Judging by Will’s expression—dazed and surprised but very far from displeased—he was pretty sure he was not the only one who thought so.
Chapter Twelve
Not in his wildest imaginings could Will have anticipated Martin bringing him a posy, but he supposed that if he had, he definitely would have expected it to be accompanied by the look of baffled mortification on his friend’s face. Martin had never known what to do with an emotion other than be embarrassed it.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Martin asked after depositing the bread and ale onto the table.
Will suspected that the look Martin referred to was best described as hopelessly fond. He dumped the contents of a teacup into the hearth, filled it with water from the ewer, then gently placed the posy inside. “Thank you,” he said, hooking two fingers into the waistband of Martin’s trousers and pulling him near.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Will grinned and settled both his hands on Martin’s hips, one chastely atop his hip bone, the other creeping lower. He kissed Martin’s collarbone through the linen of his shirt. “You know what?” he asked, steering Martin backward through the room.
“I daresay you aren’t going to keep it to yourself,” Martin sniped, because he was still prickly from having experienced a stray feeling. Will grinned into the skin of his neck, felt Martin’s pulse pounding away under his lips. He guided Martin a few steps further until his back hit the door.
“I almost brought in a few stalks of larkspur.” He kissed the underside of Martin’s jaw. “I was going to act very casual about it, as if I had just thought they might brighten the cottage up a bit, but thought you still might actually throw up.”
“Haven’t ruled it out,” Martin said, still peevish, but his hands were on Will’s back, holding him close.
Will reached behind Martin and slid the bolt into place. “There,” he said, satisfied that they’d be safe and undisturbed, and returned to kissing Martin’s jaw. One of Martin’s hands slid up to his hair, holding his head in place, and Will didn’t quite know what was going on until he realized Martin was angling his lips over Will’s. They kissed like that for a while, Will’s body keeping Martin flush against the door, until Will was fully hard and could feel that Martin was much the same. Then he started sliding Martin’s coat off, first one sleeve and then the next, never breaking the kiss. The waistcoat went next, and by the time he started untucking Martin’s shirt, Martin was already tugging it over his head.
